Acquisition of procedures: The effects of example elaborations and active learning exercises

This study explored the effects of active learning and types of elaboration on procedure acquisition (writing database queries). Training materials emphasized elaborations of conditions for executing actions versus elaborations of the connection between conditions and actions. In the “active” conditions, participants performed structured exercises designed to encourage active processing. In the “passive” conditions, participants studied examples that contained instructional elaborations. Although excessive instructional information for more knowledgeable learners can hurt performance, our results indicate that condition–action elaborations improved procedural performance the most, in both the active and passive conditions. Active learning required longer training time but was offset by reduced test time.